5 ms·

It's neither flexible nor semantic. Flexibility is what allowed webpages to be "responsive" before media-queries even existed, and semantics is what allows acc

by leppr 10y ago

It's neither flexible nor semantic. Flexibility is what allowed webpages to be "responsive" before media-queries even existed, and semantics is what allows accessibility, search engines, and other html parsing tools ("readability" in Firefox and Safari, ...) to function better. The only advantage it has is that it's old and predictable. That's why it's still used to format emails for instance, it's reliable and works on most supports.

dom0 10y ago
Most divsoup-layouts are not semantic at all, either.
- monk_e_boy 10y ago
  Exactly this. How are DIVs more semantic than TABLE? And who is reading the source? Your developers and a web spider. The web spider doesn't care (I wrote one and getting it to parse DIV content and TABLE content wasn't much effort) As far as I am aware no spider is looking at the DIV and gathering semantic information from it. Sure, it may look at the TABLE and initially assume it has tabular data in it, but a tiny bit of logic fixes that.
  - recursive 10y ago
    Which tiny bit of logic can distinguish between tabular and non-tabular tables? DIVs are not actively anti-semantic. They are just a-semantic. So they're not particularly right, they're just not actively wrong.
  - squeaky-clean 10y ago
    > And who is reading the source? Your developers and a web spider. Or blind people using a screenreader? DIVs aren't entirely semantic, but table is semantically wrong for how it's being used. It'd be like if I asked you to "get me the pencil off that thingie" and pointed at a chair with a pencil on it. As opposed to "get me the pencil off that table" while pointing at the same chair with a pencil on it.
  - naasking 10y ago
    Screen readers and spiders do look at tables as semantic content though. Tables are simply the wrong idea. That said, CSS layout should have been based on tables/grids from the get go, ie. specify a set of blocks as rows and cells, with colspan and rowspan. It took way too long to get to this point.
- rawTruthHurts 10y ago
  Not to mention that tables sized using % are as responsive as 90% of their css counterparts, whatever they are.
  - achairapart 10y ago
    Good luck transforming a desktop 3 columns layout in a mobile 2 or single column one. Or viceversa.
    - rawTruthHurts 10y ago
      90%
- thex10 10y ago
  Those are not semantic because divs have no inherent semantic meaning, while using tables for layouts is not semantic because tables have an inherent semantic meaning that's incorrectly applied to a layout.
shakna 10y ago
Not flexible? ungrid.css [0] @media (min-width: 30em) { .row { width: 100%; display: table; table- layout: fixed; } .col { display: table-cell; } } [0] http://chrisnager.github.io/ungrid/ http://chrisnager.github.io/ungrid/
emodendroket 10y ago
I mean, it is semantic, if you want a table. One of the most baffling things to me is people trying to use not-tables when they're literally trying to display tabular data.
- Symbiote 10y ago
 I laughed when I had to make a minor change to an old web application, and found our tabular, scientific data was being displayed in a series of DIV and SPAN elements, with the CSS table styles applied to them. I changed it to a real TABLE, since that's far more accessible -- most users can cut and paste into their spreadsheet, and a screen reader might give options to avoid reading out all the data. Another time, a web developer changed all my Homo sapiens to Homo sapiens.
 - scelerat 10y ago
 To be perfectly semantically correct (which he was no doubt attempting, as I is a purely visual/appearance tag, and EM connotes some meaning), he should have used 
 - Symbiote 10y ago
 is the correct element, so if you wish. A taxonomic designation is the first example given in the specification: "The i element represents a span of text in an alternate voice or mood, or otherwise offset from the normal prose in a manner indicating a different quality of text, such as a taxonomic designation, a technical term, an idiomatic phrase from another language, transliteration, a thought, or a ship name in Western texts." https://www.w3.org/TR/html5/text-level-semantics.html#the-i-element https://www.w3.org/TR/html5/text-level-semantics.html#the-i-...
 - talmand 10y ago
 For the purposes of screen readers, it is suggested to use over . What bugs me is the recent usage of as an icon holder.

by leppr 10y ago

dom0 10y ago

Most divsoup-layouts are not semantic at all, either.

monk_e_boy 10y ago
Exactly this. How are DIVs more semantic than TABLE? And who is reading the source? Your developers and a web spider. The web spider doesn't care (I wrote one and getting it to parse DIV content and TABLE content wasn't much effort) As far as I am aware no spider is looking at the DIV and gathering semantic information from it. Sure, it may look at the TABLE and initially assume it has tabular data in it, but a tiny bit of logic fixes that.
- recursive 10y ago
  Which tiny bit of logic can distinguish between tabular and non-tabular tables? DIVs are not actively anti-semantic. They are just a-semantic. So they're not particularly right, they're just not actively wrong.
- squeaky-clean 10y ago
  > And who is reading the source? Your developers and a web spider. Or blind people using a screenreader? DIVs aren't entirely semantic, but table is semantically wrong for how it's being used. It'd be like if I asked you to "get me the pencil off that thingie" and pointed at a chair with a pencil on it. As opposed to "get me the pencil off that table" while pointing at the same chair with a pencil on it.
- naasking 10y ago
  Screen readers and spiders do look at tables as semantic content though. Tables are simply the wrong idea. That said, CSS layout should have been based on tables/grids from the get go, ie. specify a set of blocks as rows and cells, with colspan and rowspan. It took way too long to get to this point.
rawTruthHurts 10y ago
Not to mention that tables sized using % are as responsive as 90% of their css counterparts, whatever they are.
- achairapart 10y ago
  Good luck transforming a desktop 3 columns layout in a mobile 2 or single column one. Or viceversa.
  - rawTruthHurts 10y ago
    90%
thex10 10y ago
Those are not semantic because divs have no inherent semantic meaning, while using tables for layouts is not semantic because tables have an inherent semantic meaning that's incorrectly applied to a layout.

shakna 10y ago

Not flexible? ungrid.css [0] @media (min-width: 30em) { .row { width: 100%; display: table; table- layout: fixed; } .col { display: table-cell; } } [0] http://chrisnager.github.io/ungrid/ http://chrisnager.github.io/ungrid/

emodendroket 10y ago

I mean, it is semantic, if you want a table. One of the most baffling things to me is people trying to use not-tables when they're literally trying to display tabular data.

Symbiote 10y ago
I laughed when I had to make a minor change to an old web application, and found our tabular, scientific data was being displayed in a series of DIV and SPAN elements, with the CSS table styles applied to them. I changed it to a real TABLE, since that's far more accessible -- most users can cut and paste into their spreadsheet, and a screen reader might give options to avoid reading out all the data. Another time, a web developer changed all my Homo sapiens to Homo sapiens.
- scelerat 10y ago
 To be perfectly semantically correct (which he was no doubt attempting, as I is a purely visual/appearance tag, and EM connotes some meaning), he should have used 
 - Symbiote 10y ago
 is the correct element, so if you wish. A taxonomic designation is the first example given in the specification: "The i element represents a span of text in an alternate voice or mood, or otherwise offset from the normal prose in a manner indicating a different quality of text, such as a taxonomic designation, a technical term, an idiomatic phrase from another language, transliteration, a thought, or a ship name in Western texts." https://www.w3.org/TR/html5/text-level-semantics.html#the-i-element https://www.w3.org/TR/html5/text-level-semantics.html#the-i-...
- talmand 10y ago
 For the purposes of screen readers, it is suggested to use over . What bugs me is the recent usage of as an icon holder.